Surprised by Joy

The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

Rating: 3/5 – A decent autobiography, but not Lewis’s finest work.

My three stars in this review mostly come from the quality of Lewis’s prose, which is beautiful and elegant, like all of his other work. The story itself is fairly mundane and while it held my interest long enough for me to finish the book, I didn’t find any of it particularly compelling.

I did come away with a long reading list of material that Lewis says had a huge influence on him, and for that I am in this book’s debt. But otherwise, I would recommend most people pursue Lewis’s other, much better works.

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